'There's a bat in my mouth': Virginia doctor wakes up to find bat burrowing between her lips in viral scare

Dr Krista Edelman, a gastroenterologist from Richmond, Virginia, woke during the night to discover a live bat pressing itself between her lips — she had at first been dreaming that a field mouse was crawling into her mouth. She grabbed the bat and threw it across the room; her husband then helped capture it alive so it could be submitted for rabies testing. Edelman went directly to St Mary's Hospital — where she works — and began a preventive course of rabies treatment; the bat later came back negative. Her Instagram post has since drawn over 1.1 million views and 5,300 comments.

Edelman had not believed she had been bitten, yet her friend who specialises in infectious disease 'got anxious — and he's not an anxious person.'

ER director Dr Adam Landsee cautioned that bat teeth are tiny enough that bites frequently go undetected: 'With rabies being essentially fatal, they need to be treated.'

Edelman encouraged anyone in an older property to 'check those attics and chimneys' — the number of bats submitted for rabies testing in Virginia is running higher this year.